We stumbled across this little red telephone box during a walk through Limpley Stoke, just outside Bath, the other day and obviously I had to stop. Because it wasn’t a telephone box anymore - it was full of books.
I’ve spotted these little phone box libraries in villages before, usually while driving through somewhere and immediately wishing I had time to pull over and investigate. There’s something very British about taking an obsolete piece of street furniture and deciding that the obvious solution is to fill it with secondhand books.
So, naturally, I did a little digging.
It turns out many of these converted phone boxes exist thanks to BT’s Adopt a Kiosk scheme. Communities can adopt one of BT’s old red phone boxes for the grand total of £1 and give it a completely new purpose. More than 5,000 communities have already done it, turning old kiosks into everything from tiny libraries and food banks to defibrillator stations.
Obviously, the little libraries are my favourite. The idea is wonderfully simple: shelves are fitted inside, people leave books they’ve finished and take something they fancy reading.
I love that these phone boxes have somehow gone from places where people once stood feeding coins into a telephone to tiny village libraries. And now I know there's a map, I fear I'm going to start actively looking for them.
If you have a phone box library near you, or know of a particularly lovely one, let me know. I feel a very niche British book tour coming on.
